Growing up in a big family
I recently read this essay by Jay Neugeboren about growing up in a very large family with 35 first cousins. Neugeboren is somewhat older than I am, and so the era he describes was earlier but not all that much earlier. But the type of family he describes is nothing like my family was.
My family was very very small. I had parents and an older brother. But I had only one aunt and uncle and one first cousin, and my aunt and cousin both died when I was six years old, within a few weeks of each other of completely different causes. Two of my grandparents died before I was born, and my other grandfather was very very ill until he died when I was eight. My remaining grandmother played a huge part in my life and lived nearby, but she died when I was nineteen.
And so there was none of the sort of casual family get-together stuff with all the cousins playing together, the thing described in Neugeboren’s article. My uncle did remarry, and he had two stepchildren, but one was considerably older and the other was very difficult.
However, I also lived in the kind of community where it was common to call the friends of one’s parents by the honorifics “aunt” and “uncle” even though we weren’t related. So there was that.
But it was nevertheless a very different universe from the one that Neugeboren inhabited, and very different from the one in which my own grandmother was raised. She was an only child, it’s true, but she had 36 first cousins and they all lived in New York City. Interestingly enough, I married a man who had (I write in the past tense because many are now deceased) something like 26 first cousins, so many he really lost count.
What about you? Are you still in touch with your cousins? As it turns out, as an adult, I reconnected with one of my cousins-by-marriage (the older one) and we are very good friends now. I also found out, through DNA testing and by chance, that we are actually very distantly related. I’m also very distantly related to my ex-husband.
Go figure.
Father was an only child, his father the only one of his siblings to survive early childhood, so there were few relatives there other than grandfather’s many cousins on his mother’s side. I am still in touch with some of their offspring.
Mother is a centenarian, has a living sister and three deceased brothers, all with multiple children. I lost three cousins in the past three years, but others are thriving and had multiple children. We had a lot of cousin and family interactions when I was young, Sunday dinners at Grandma’s with scads of guests.
Mother’s parents each were one of ten children, so Mother had many, many cousins. Until about the end of the 1990’s both her mother’s and father’s sides had annual family reunions, renting multiple pavilions and buildings at a fairground to manage the crowds. But that is not sustainable in today’s world as lives have scattered and family bonds eroded.
I had classmates who were from farm families of ten, twelve, and sixteen children. The “English” farmers no longer have these big families, having sold their properties to Amish and Old Order Mennonites who continue to be very prolific.
Dan D:
My mother was an only child, and my father one of only 2 children. I know nothing about my paternal grandmother’s family, including how many siblings she may have had. But my paternal grandfather was one of something like 12 siblings. Only a few came to the US, and he apparently became estranged from them over 100 years ago. He died in the 1920’s.
I’m from a family of 8, as was my father… I grew up with dozens of cousins, nephews, nieces, etc, many of whom I keep in contact with (Facebook makes that easier than it used to be). In fact, I now have a great-great-great nephew! I’m an ancestor.
I am the eldest of six children with 21 first cousins, so 27 of us in my generation. I’d have to check but the range from oldest to youngest was 16 years or so. We lived relatively close to each other and my father’s and mother’s families were in the same neighborhood when they were growing up so both sides of my family would get together pretty regularly. There is only one person left alive from my parents generation, my father’s youngest brother. Five of the first cousins have passed, at least one from each family, my youngest brother was the first.
We don’t get together often now – the usual weddings and funerals – but every time we do it is very comfortable and enjoyable. We all talk about how we should meet up more often but that never manages to come together.
My wife is from a very small family, just two first cousins on her father’s side. She is used to it now but my family gatherings were overwhelming for her at first. 🙂
My father was an only child. My mother had one sister who never got married. I have one sibling. I envied my friends from large familie. My husband is from a large family (his father was one of ten children) and he to with his cousins, but now he and his cousins have drifted apart.
My parents are dead, and my aunt has decided to “disown” me in favor of her neighbor. That is painful because it takes away one of the few relatives I have left, plus the memories of visiting her and my grandparents. Not to mention that the neighbor will get what little my grandparents left when they passed. Or she’ll dump it all in a landfill. There are things that were part of my mom’s childhood.
I had eighteen first cousins on my father’s side, and two on my mother’s. We lived far away from them, so I knew about them mostly from monthly family letters my grandfather sent. The cousins I did know were second cousins who lived near enough for annual holiday visits, and I cherish those memories. In fact, I just heard from the one who migrated to Israel forty years ago, converted, married, and stayed. His son has rotated off of IDF reserve duty intact, thanks be to God.
Each of my parents came from a family of six, so I had lots of cousins, about 48. I am still in touch with many of them, especially on my dad’s side. We have an email list and get together every few years. I have four children, and my sister has two, and when they were small, the cousins would get together fairly often. I now have ten grandchildren, and these cousins are pretty happy when they get together. One lives in Texas, but the rest of them live much closer to us. It’s a blast.
I had seven cousins- one was killed in an auto accident when I was 20. I call my MT cousin every month: conversations tend to last two hours. My sister and I have had two long conversations recently with another NYC cousin who talks frequently with our MT cousin. My sister and I have also had threesomes with our MT cousin. My sister and I recently visited a cousin on the other side of the family, whom we hadn’t seen in decades. Some cousins keep together with a Facebook posting. I don’t do Facebook. (As a lot of that is hyper-partisan Democrat stuff from NYC, I’m not missing much.)
My siblings + I keep in touch with some second cousins. Our mothers grew up together in OK, and ended up married to northerners in New England. As we saw a lot of each other- always Thanksgiving together plus lots of summer- until they moved from New England when I was 10, we maintain the relationships. One second cousin recently informed my sister that he and all his siblings had tested positive for Lynch’s syndrome- most likely from their mother, who was a first cousin to our mother. My sister got tested, and found out that she also had Lynch’s syndrome.
The best friend of my paternal grandfather was his first cousin. That friendship carried onto the following generations. We always saw the families related to my grandfather’s first cousin when we came back for visits. As a result, I had periodic meetings with some third cousins, which is about as deep as it can go, I’d think.
Other second cousins- met maybe once, for the most part.
I got my maternal grandmother started on making some tapes of family history, which my brother recently digitized. Text and speech- miraculous. From the tapes, one cousin got a radically different view of his father- which resulted in tears. He had known his father (my uncle) only as someone enfeebled and embittered from a rare brain infection, so rare that UCLA treated him for free, for the knowledge. My uncle did recover enough to work for the Post Office, which was a comedown from his former managerial post. From our grandmother’s tapes, my cousin learned that when healthy, his father had been a charismatic person whom the whole town had applauded at one time when he was a child.
Thank you for this post,Neo!
I had no first cousins. My parents each had a sister who had no children. One of my grandparents survived World War 2 and came to the U.S. and lived with us for about 5 years.
I have many cousins-in-law, thanks to my wife and her family. We will have a reunion with some of them on Memorial Day.
Again, thank you for posting about this topic.
I had 14 first cousins- 4 from my mother’s brother and 10 combined from my father’s 3 sisters and 1 brother. However, I also grew up with several first cousins once removed since my maternal grandmother had some younger siblings who were closer in age to my mother and had children around my age, too.
I’m the youngest of four. I only talk to one other sibling. I haven’t met all my aunts and uncles and can’t even recall how many cousins I have. My wife’s side of the family is huge. Close to 50 cousins. We get together with her 2nd cousins and our kids visit with their 3rd cousins. Pretty much the opposite of my family. We’re at my mother-in-law’s (f-i-l passed away in Feb) this weekend with two of my wife’s siblings. We vacation with my in-laws and spend most holidays with them. My brother-in-law stayed with us both times I had knee replacement to help out. I love my in-laws more than my own family. Sad, but true.
My mother had 3(living) siblings, my father 4 (living).
I put “living” as a qualifier to remind people what pre-antibiotic life was like. Two childhood deaths -Spanish flu- and one 7 month preemie that lived less an hour.
I have 5 cousins on my mother’s side, all still living. 12 on my father’s side – only 9 still left- they just died before me- I’m old. Guess which side was the good 40’s-50’s Catholic side :-). I’m the oldest on both sides. I have 1 sister, who had 2 kids. My wife was an only child.
I have two children so they have two cousins. My son remained childless by choice. He was career Army, almost all pointy-end, and said he didn’t want to leave a widow and orphans. My daughter had two of her own, her husband has three nephews, so that generation has only 3 cousins.
Yes, smaller families and the deliberately childless are making cousins as rare as siblings.
Definitely. I feel very lucky to have a positive relationship with my extended family because I know not everyone does. We very often celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and occasions like graduations together. We still have get-togethers even though most of the cousins are adults. I think I see every aunt/uncle and cousin at least once a year and those on my mother’s side I usually see several times a year. I even visited my father’s cousin when I was on a trip to her state earlier this year. It’s nice to have those connections, that built-in social capital.
My father was one of 3 children, but my mother was one of 10. So I had 35 cousins on my mother’s side & 4 on my father’s side.
The 4th of July was always a big bash at mom’s family farm & attendance was required. About 55 people. Plus, it was a real farm. A big yard, a corn field, grain silo, a garden, a chicken coup, a few cattle in the early days, and a small apple orchard. The kids were everywhere. With fireworks sometimes. Oh my! No one lost any eyes or digits.
My five first cousins on my father’s side are all boys; my two cousins on my mother’s side are both girls.
My parents’ family was the largest of the bunch (4 including me, mixed genders).
AesopSpouse also has only male cousins on his father’s side (3), and only female cousins on his mother’s side (also 3).
His parents’ family was also the largest (4, also mixed).
Go figure.
My family and our cousins had been fairly close as children, due to holidays at the Grandparent’s homes, and remained routinely in contact with most of them, particularly the ones who lived in the same town we did.
Some of my siblings just recently attended the 92nd birthday of my maternal aunt, the mother of the two girls. None of my sibs have kids, and Aunt has only one grandson, who has 2 cute little boys, but he was adopted as an infant, so that branch of the family, DNA-wise, is extinct.
My paternal cousins have, among them, 7 kids, and a reasonable passel of grandkids now. They are all pretty close to each other (geographic proximity), but not to our kids and grandkids (we didn’t live in the same area for most of the time).
AS and his cousins were a little less close due to parental employment and dispersed residences, and there aren’t many descendants in their lines, but he has 11 assorted nieces and nephews, some of whom have spawned.
Fun trivia for us: one of his sisters had her two youngest (twins) only a week before the birth of our first grandson.
And the wife of one of our sons (youngest of her large family) is the aunt of the wife of one of his cousins (youngest daughter of her oldest sister).
So he’s his cousin’s uncle.
38 1st cousins, and there are 5 of us (me and my siblings). I lived across the river (well, creek actually) and through the woods – I mean this literally – from my maternal grandparents farm. They lived to 96 and 94, had 8 of their own, and across the road was my great-uncle’s farm. All 8 of their kids and all 22 of us grandkids thought they both walked on water. My grandfather and my great-uncle married 2 sisters, and raised 17 kids on the same farm. Around here people call that double-first cousins, so I guess that means I also have (had) 9 double 2nd cousins.
Sunday afternoons we all met at my grandparents, and then Sunday evenings my immediate family went into town to spend the evening with my paternal grandmother and all of that side of the family’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. I look back on that time with much affection, though at the time it could get pretty hectic.
And, it all seemed just so very normal.
I had zero first cousins on my father’s side, and 9 on my mother’s side.
In the last 4 years I have discovered three more first cousins on my mother’s side and there may be more. My mother and all her siblings are dead but I have two surviving spouses to talk to. We were told almost nothing, never knew my mother’s mother was alive until 1982.
Ancestry.com delivers very interesting things.
I have 5 cousins on my mother’s side. 3 I grew up with and two I’ve never met. On my dad’s side I have nine cousins and we were quite close. I’m still very close with my girl cousins. I’m oldest of six and hubby’s in the middle of 11. We are both close to our siblings.
My husband comes from a truly massive family. His mother was oldest of 11 and he has 54 cousins on that side. His dad was oldest of thirteen and there are 83 cousins on that side. First cousins, mind you. No a clue how many second cousins there are. I’ve met them all and family events are truly fun times. Both sides have reunions often and people really do their best to come. If there was ever a bunch of people who should have taken “go forth and multiply” to heart it’s these folks. When you hear the term “salt of the earth” it’s these people for sure and they are a credit to humanity. I’m lucky to know them all.
I’m one of a tribe of 36 cousins on my dad’s Irish Catholic side of the family, plus a few more on my mom’s Presbyterian side and uncountable numbers of cousins’ children and grandchildren. We’re scattered around the country and the world now, but the connections among us have gotten more and more important to us all as we get older. We stay in loose touch through social media and email, and when we do manage to get together physically — usually at weddings or funerals, but once in a while at planned reunions — there’s an astonishing charge of understanding, familiarity and love in the air, something I feel only with them. There’s so much we don’t have to explain. It’s an extraordinary gift.
My mother was one of seven children as well as my father. My maternal grandmother was one of thirteen. For the past 70 years we have had periodic family reunions of the progeny of my maternal great grandparents. It was, particularly in the early years quite a crowd. My wife and I have maintained contact with a number of them, though none live in our area.
My father was an only child, my mother only surviving child – so no first cousins. The hopes of all four grandparents rested on us, my sister and two brothers. My paternal grandmother was the youngest of nine, but only two of her brothers were in the US, and only one had children and grandchildren. We knew of them, and met them on rare occasions. We met one of the English cousins and her children, once – was struck by the strong family resemblance to my youngest brother.
Maternal grandfather had brothers, who emigrated to northern California – I’m in touch with them through a regular cousins zoom call, but I honestly don’t have much in the way of common interests with them all. They grew up closely associating and have friends and experiences in common – which I don’t share.
Me and my brother and an abusive golden-boy bully of a stepbrother for boys. After he punched me back onto a chair and I lifted him about a foot with my heels to his crotch, that stopped. The stepfather was that cubed and involved a hammer. His older daughter who was abused by him just as much was very nice but she took off as soon as she could and I never heard from/about her again.
Maternal cousins lived way off and gone and that’s it.
So, no, it was mostly just me and my brother after all that thankfully dispersed.
An Illegal Immigrant From Turkey Warns That Dangerous People Are Entering the U.S. – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2024/05/an-illegal-immigrant-from-turkey-warns.html
“Neugeboren” may be Yiddish-rooted for new birth, or re-birth. So much Yiddish is German-rooted that I, a Christian, can understand spoken Yiddish maybe 80% of the time because of my 4 years of German courses in college, when 2 years minimum of a foreign language was mandated by all “good” schools.That was on top of 4 years in high school.
My dad had 9 siblings, 6 brothers, 3 sisters. My mom had 2 sisters.
One of Mom’s sisters had only two kids. The other had four.
One of my dad’s sisters died young before having children, but the other 8 each had a minimum of 3 kids. The eldest cousin (John) is actually older than the youngest uncle (Randy). I’d have to actually count it up to be exact but I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 first cousins.
We had huge family gatherings several times a year when I was growing up…usually at the Grandparent’s houses. Mom’s side’s get-togethers were obviously smaller, but no less important. Dad’s side were all farmers and country folks and Grandma still lived on the family farm, even after Grandpa died, so there was plenty of space for all of us.
I still talk to my cousins on Mom’s side occasionally, but we rarely get together…seems like these days it’s always at a funeral.
Dad’s side has a family reunion on labor day weekend every year, but attendance is hit or miss…especially since all but three of the siblings are gone now…including my dad. There are some cousins I haven’t spoken to or seen in many years, others I talk to fairly regularly. I don’t live near any of them, so meeting up with them isn’t a usual thing except on the rare years that we both make it to the reunion.
My dad had one brother with two daughters, so that’s two cousins on that side. My mother had one sister with two sons, so that’s two cousins on that side. We saw each other regularly before we got married, and occasionally afterwards, but all are gone now and we have not stayed in very much contact with their kids (a total of about 9). When my maternal grandmother was alive, the cousins on that side were all close. We got together at least once a year until the cousins had families of their own, then saw each other much less frequently. I and one cousin’s wife are now the only surviving members of that generation, but we stay in touch through Christmas letters.
I’m happy to note that our three daughters keep in very close contact with each other, and their children (one each) are very close cousins. Social scientists who study such arcane matters report that Foreign Service families are typically closer than other families, partly because the kids did not have long-term friendships as a result of moving from post to post on subsequent assignments.
107 first cousins – grandparents had a very large family and all of my aunts and uncles followed suit. I can only recall three deaths among them so far (I am 67 years old and most of the cousins are my age or younger).
My father’s parents were married in 1914. All seven children survived into adulthood. In its time, this was remarkably good luck.
Philip Kraemer:
Wow!
The cousins who are newly discovered in my family have a Facebook group for sharing new details and discoveries. One of the members started off Memorial Day Weekend with the question, “Any new cousins I haven’t heard about?
Moderately large uber-family (parents’ b&s) on both sides. Four kids on my mom (3g/1b), 7 on my father’s(3b/4g).
I was generally closer to my mother’s family rather than my father’s, as most of them lived in NYC or Chicago for my youth — only one lived where I lived, an Aunt and her husband, with a daughter and a son… the son was almost my age, so we did grow up together, but we were pretty different… so we got along a fair amount, but only in variable spurts. He was much more of a “wild child” in his teens, but settled down a lot when he became an adult, and generally has done ok for himself. I haven’t seen him in about 15y, as he’s been kind of distant and I’m not going to reach out continually to someone who won’t reach out to me. He married a 2nd Gen Cuban, and they had 3 girls.
I know of my other cousins on my father’s side, but only distantly — haven’t seen them anywhere but FB for at least 30y. All the uncles, including my own father, died fairly young (cigarettes, mostly), but the aunts all lived to a fairly ripe old age, though they’ve all passed.
Back on the mother’s side, three had one kid each, and the youngest had one daughter by her first husband and one by her second. The oldest had a son like my mother, but they were always the wasted time of the family, constantly on the family grift, always thinking the world owed them something, so, haven’t really given a crap about either of them (the aunt passed away about 15y ago). The uncle and his wife are still alive and they have a daughter whom I see occasionally. The youngest, with the two daughters, I’m fairly close to the first one (still see occasionally) but the other I haven’t seen in like 15y either. She’s ok, we just have nothing whatsoever in common, really. The older of those two had two boys, the younger I think has four kids (like I said, not close 😛 )
A quick gauge of actual proximity for the three maternal-side female cousins tends to be intellectual nature and intelligence. The two I regularly interact with are both more like me in that regard, the other is more “earthy” (not to suggest any issue with that, it just means we don’t really have much to talk about).
I suspect that’s kind of that way with the paternal cousins, too — I never got along with the sister of the one my age, she’s, well, “not that bright” would be the best description. Her brother, well, he’s smart enough but still not really as intellectual as I am. We’d almost certainly still interact more, but I’m not going to do all the work of keeping the relationship alive.
The other family that is up north, I don’t interact with much but I’d say they’re like the other “not close” female maternal cousin, “earthy”… and again, not looking down, just not a lot to talk that much about or to share with them.
Fab post.
Amazing, touching stories.
Almost like reading Anne Tyler’s entire oeuvre in one gulp. (Well, not quite…)
I guess the constant thread is never give up on family (well, mostly).
Which reminds me…
Sd
We know. The military bases and their families are being probed.
On my dad’s side, I have in the neighborhood of a hundred first cousins.
On my mom’s side, I have one.
I’m distantly related to my wife, too (we have a common ancestor about six generations back). It’s more common than you think, especially in or near New England, where there was a very small pool of early colonists. Once you trace lineage to one of them, you’re “related” to the rest of them some way or another.
However, I also lived in the kind of community where it was common to call the friends of one’s parents by the honorifics “aunt” and “uncle” even though we weren’t related. So there was that.
My family was the same way. My father was one of ten and his father was one of 12. 9 boys and huge funerals where I met most of them. My mother was one of 4 but only one other survived until I met her. One brother died of rheumatic heart disease and another died as a small child from what sounds like pyloric stenosis. The cure for the latter was found 10 years after his death.
My mother was born in 1898 and lived in three centuries, dying in 2001. Her father died of pneumonia in 1899 when she was an infant. She had a tracheostomy on her mother’s kitchen table at age 2 for Diphtheria so I know about disease in those days. Both her mother and her brother died in 1926 so she moved to Los Angeles, living with cousins until 1929 ruined them financially. She moved back to Chicago and lived with her sister and her husband. She had great stories about the 1920s and California. She and my father had a long courtship because it was the Depression, so I was born when she was 40 and my sister was born when she was 43. All my great grandmother’s children lived until adulthood as farm life was far healthier than city life.
I am still as close to most of my cousins as distance allows. After I moved to California, I visited my mother in Chicago frequently. My father and I were estranged in his last years.
Mike K:
What strength your mother must have had!
I had 17 cousins on my mother’s side, if you include 2nd cousins (most of my father’s brothers and sisters had their children quite a bit earlier, and my 2nd cousins were approximately my age), I had a roughly equivalent number on my father’s side.
We lived in the same city most of my childhood, so regular contact was the norm. The cousins ranged in age; several of the older cousins babysat myself and my brother when we were young.
My dad’s family lived in WV, we lived in OH, so our visits were once or twice a year.
As adults, there are several cousins I’m rather close to; others, although we are friendly when we meet, seldom get together. Some of that is age and infirmity (mine and theirs).
Cousins are great, with all the fun of shared genes and similar interests, but without that sibling rivalry.